


Thin Ice

by foxsgloves



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: F/F, Fluffity Fluff Fluff, my favorite ice lesbians, what's better than this just gals being pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 16:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11165547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxsgloves/pseuds/foxsgloves
Summary: Sara wants to distract herself after a fight with Mickey.  Mila is there to help with hot chocolate, boob jokes, and lifts across the ice.





	Thin Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Sara/Mila makes my crops grow and I wanted to contribute, and also just write a bunch of cheesy anime romance tropes because I'm exactly that kind of garbage

Sara Crispino lands a clean and crisp triple toe loop in practice after the Grand Prix Final with no one to see it, taking advantage of the empty rink and emptier stadium.  She’s always liked the strange stillness of the too-bright fluorescent lights falling on row after row of empty white benches.  Not even the echo of the vast crowd that filled it mere hours earlier, just an open silence almost a music to skate to all its own, the echo of each strike of her blades returning muffled and far away as if through miles of snowy air.

“Molodtsy!” cries Mila Babicheva from the front-row stands, clapping her hands above her head.

Well, maybe one person to see it.

Sara slides to a stop on the other side of the barrier, her skates skidding up mist.  “Sorry.  Didn’t realize you were here.”

“It’s all right.”  Mila leans over the railing, lacing her bare, freckled fingers.  “I was looking for you, you know!  You disappeared after the banquet last night like a ghost.”

“I was tired.”  She had snuck out of the party to call her mother and tell her she wasn’t coming back to Italy for the training season.

It was a long call, most of the seconds swallowed up by drawn and weighted silence.  And then of course Mickey had come to find her, after their mother had passed the news on to him, exactly like Sara had asked her not to but knew she would anyway.  She sat waiting, stiff-backed, on the edge of her hotel bed with her phone beside her, smoldering with shame at how her pulse hammered at the thought of his heavy knock, had been so sure it would come earlier.

“I know, but you missed Yuri Katsuki dancing again!  This time he twirled his shirt around his head and threw it at Viktor.  I think he gave Yura an aneurysm.”

Sara covered her smile with a gloved hand.  “Okay, I do kind of regret missing that.”  Yuri Katsuki’s dancing had been the highlight of a whole week last year, even though Mickey wouldn’t stop bringing up how boiling mad it made him, especially after Sara told him he was boring her.  He called Yuri a perv.  He called any man who’d ever made eye contact with Sara a perv, even if she was the one who talked to him first.  Sometimes just to see what Mickey’d do.

Time to change the subject so she didn’t have to linger on that train of thought.  After all, she came here to distract herself.  She sets the toe pick of her left skate into the ice.  “How did you find me?”

“I followed your Instagram feed!” said Mila, resting her chin on one hand, pulling her grin lopsided.  “Not be a stalker or anything.”

That afternoon, Sara had gone sightseeing at the Sagrada Familia and snapped selfies of herself by the doors (ignoring two calls from Mickey) and wandered around the Gothic Quarter and took pictures of her coffee with a foam doodle of a rising sun (ignoring three calls from Mickey) and went back to the rink and took a picture of the lacing on her skates (ignoring a sixth and final call from Mickey).

“Don’t do this, Sara,” he’d begged the night before, trying to clasp her hands.  “Don’t do this to me.  I said you were right!  It was getting better!  If it’s not enough, I can do more.  Don’t do this to me.”

“I’m not doing it to you,” she said.  “I’m doing it for me.”  For Mickey it was the same, though.  She couldn’t make him understand the difference.

“I can do better.  I can do more.  Let me try, Sara.  Don’t do this to me.  Don’t do this to mother.”

Silvia Crispino still keeps her old costumes on the top shelf of the loft closet, the fabric stiff and faded but the beads and spangles bright as twenty years ago.  When she was a girl Sara would pull them on and toddle about the house, tipping over when the sequins bunched about her ankles. 

Her mother took them out on the ice together, as small children, and they took their first steps together, clasping hands.  From her first stroke of the ice Sara never skated alone.

“I was just worried about you, you know?” says Mila, her voice cutting through Sara’s memory of their argument.  “With Mickey and everything.” 

Sara’s left foot wobbles across the ice.  “How did you know?”

“He’s not exactly… a subtle guy, you know?  I could practically feel the rage boiling off him.”  Sara steadies herself on the barrier, her gloved hands slipping.  “Plus his room was right next to Yura’s.  Yura had to go bang on his door in the middle of the night to tell him to be quiet and couldn’t a gold medalist get some damned peace and quiet for one night, for fuck’s sake.”

“I bet he hated that,” says Sara, pressing her fist against her tiny grin. 

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know you could talk about it with me, if you want.”  Mila braces her hands on the railing and arches her back in a stretch.  “I’ll even come sulk with you in a touristy church.  But you have to get me hot chocolate afterwards!”

“Maybe we could skip right to the hot chocolate.” Sara lowers her hand so Mila can see her smile.

It’s strange to think that two years ago, Sara thought she hated Mila Babicheva.

She had never actually met Mila Babicheva, besides the passing greetings in hotel lobbies and post-competition parties, but it seemed knowing her was not necessary in order to foster a burning in her throat whenever she saw her name ahead in the rankings.  Which was all of the time.  Through juniors’ Mila was always just a smidge ahead of her. 

She would fume when Valentino, her coach and her mother’s old doubles partner, praised Mila’s effortless step sequences, and when Mila landed a flawless triple Axel in the grand prix qualifiers while Sara could hardly even manage one while touching the ice in practice, it seemed a deeply personal affront, her jealousy almost like a sickness.  At the gala where they celebrated Mila’s silver over Sara’s bronze, she watched with her lips pressed together, clinging to Mickey’s arm, as Mila lounged beside the other Russians in the center of the party with tousled hair and an easy, effortless confidence, grabbing Viktor Nikiforov’s arm to show him something on her phone.

She had thought Mila her rival, of sorts.  Her nemesis.  Until the day after a disastrous Worlds practice when she took a spill on the ice.  She had only turned her ankle—nothing serious—but Mila came and found her in the locker room while Mickey had run off somewhere to get a bandage and ice pack.

“That was something,” she said, leaning against the lockers.  “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” said Sara, her smile a little stiffer than necessary.

“Good.  Looked like it hurt.”  She patted Sara’s arm.  “Hey, me and Ayako are going out to sightsee later tonight.  We’re going to stop by that street with all the sweet shops.  Do you want to come?”

A not insignificant portion of Sara’s social media was devoted to chocolate.  Which Mila knew, because they followed each other.  After all, you had to keep your friends close and your bitter rivals closer.  “Sure, I guess,” she was surprised to find herself saying.  “But I might be limping behind you.”

“That’s okay.  You can lean on me if you have to.”

She did have to lean, a little bit, but Mila’s freckled arms were lean and corded from practice.  And they went and got three hot chocolates and drank them all in a row, the torch of heated rivalry Sara had so imagined herself carrying evaporated into nothing but mist under the sun.  And now Mila was her friend.  The sort of friend who came to find her in an empty ice rink by stalking her Instagram after she and her brother had a melodramatic fight.

“I’m moving,” she blurts.  “I’m leaving Italy.”

“Oh.  Well, that explains it.”  Mila blows on her pale fingers, tipped ruddy in the cold air.  “Where are you going?”

“USA. New Jersey.  You know Evelina Krupin?”

“Your Aunt Eva?”  Silvia Crispino and Evelina, then Evelina Anselmetti, had skated together in the Italian women’s singles championships in the eighties.  There’s a photo in the Crispinos’ kitchen of her and Sara’s mother with their arms thrown about each other on the rink of her 1986 Grand Prix Final, Eva’s medal smacking her mother’s cheek as they spun around in an embrace.

“She and her husband coach in America.  They have an apartment they’re going to rent to me.”  There’s a university in the ridiculously-named city of Hackensack, too, where can transfer her credits.  They don’t have Italian, obviously, but she can put her credits towards a literature degree with a global focus.

“Hmm.  It’s very cold there.  Not as cold as Russia, but still.  We should go shopping for coats together.”

Mila and her girlfriend shared a coat often, draped over both their shoulders in the thick Russian snow.  “Are you still dating… Um…” The Russian women’s hockey player with the long legs and freckled snub nose. They posted Instagram pictures of themselves leaning against each other, smiling cheeks pressed together, on dates to the art institute and football games.

Not that Sara paid close attention to what Mila and her girlfriend did on their social media accounts or anything.

“Tasha?” Mila says with a rueful grin and a one-sided shrug. “No. That ended a few weeks before Cup of China. I thought I was handling it badly until I saw Georgi’s routine.”

Sara presses her gloved hand beneath her smile. “Whatever happened to Georgi, anyway?”

“He’s gotten over it. Just like me, in a little time.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mila shrugs again. “Don’t be. I liked her, but we weren’t good together.”

“I understand,” says Sara, and thinks of the six missed calls flashing on her home screen.

“It’s too bad, though.” Mila taps a finger against her cheek.  “She always let me practice my lifts with her.  I was getting very strong.”  She lifts her sleeve away from her bicep and flexes.  “Look!  Look at these guns.”

Sara squeezes her gloved hand over the muscle, laying a hand on her forehead in an exaggerated swoon.  “My goodness!  Such strength!”  Mila giggles, her blue eyes round and her left cheek dimpling, and this gives Sara an idea.

“Lift me instead,” she says, leaning forward with her hands on her hips.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.  I want to fly.” 

Mila, wide-eyed, bobs her head.  “All right.  Just let me go lace up.”

While Sara waits, she blows puffs of cloudy breath into her hands, trying to warm the numb tip of her nose.  She and Mickey’s coach strictly forbid them from trying lifts, driving the lesson home with a whole slew of morbid stories of skaters who’d taken gambled risks and lost.  Mickey still tried to convince her, every once and a while, but all those tales of cracked ribs and broken legs had made her too afraid.

Sara is so very tired of feeling afraid.

“I’m back, I’m back!” Mila launches herself onto the ice in a graceful arc.  “Are you still sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure.” 

“You have to put all your trust in me,” Mila says with a mocking wag of her finger.

“You’re my friend.  Of course I trust you.”  Sara’s knees wobble a bit as she mounts the barrier, though, bracing herself on top of it. 

“All right.” Mila tilts her head towards the other side of the arena.  “It’s just a carry lift, so we’re going straight across the ice.  All you have to do is stay up there.  Arms and legs out and yelling is both helpful and a bonus, though.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Mila takes a deep breath and settles her hands on Sara’s hips.  She can feel their warmth even through layers of glove and shirt.  “Okay.  Ready?  One, two three!”

Sara isn’t ready.  She squeals a little as Mila heaves her aloft, heart hammering in her throat, and the blade of one skate whacks the barrier as Mila turns them around, before she remembers she’s supposed to hold her limbs steady.

“Arms and legs out!” Mila commands, jiggling her a little higher.  “Remember, you’re flying!”

Sara holds her arms out like a child making a snow angel, and Mila pushes off and then she really is flying, the cold air whistling in her ears, and she throws her head back to laugh.

Mila sets her back down atop the barrier on the other side of the rink and she tugs at the shoulder of Mila’s jacket.  “Can we go again?”

“Whew!  Sure, just give me a little rest.  Sorry, you’re heavier than Yura.  I mean, everyone’s heavier than Yura, he’s like a stick person.  You’ve got more…”  She makes a gesture in the air that’s probably supposed to refer to Sara’s feminine assets. 

Sara giggles and slaps her on the arm.  “Stop staring at my tits, you degenerate!”

“But I have to see how much muscle I’ll need to use!  I’m practicing safe lifting habits!”

Sara bounces a bit on the barrier with childish glee.  “Will you spin me this time?”

Mila does spin her in a huge, lazy circle, her hair twirling around her head like ribbons, and the next time in a zigzag across the ice, the cold air skimming across her stomach as the hem of her shirt flutters.  “And the crowd goes wild for Crispino and Babicheva, the first women’s pair skating team!” She mimics a huge cheer, even though she’s red-cheeked and breathless.  “World champions, even though they had to deal with the unexpected weight distribution changes of a bosom!”

Sara laughs in huge, rib-shaking gusts, and it quivers all the way down through Mila’s arms and makes her tilt a little too far to the left.  She doesn’t even have time for a thrill of fear before the big white mirror of the ice crashes up to the meet them and she goes sprawling.  The first time she’s been surprised by a fall since she was a little girl, toddling after her brother and mother on shaky legs.

She flips onto her back with a groan.  Mila leans over, one hand pressed to her chest, the other shaking Sara’s arm.  “Sara, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, are you all right?”

Sara tests the knee and elbow that took the worst blows.  The elbow tingles and the knee aches, but she’ll live.

“I’m fine. I’ve only got a bruise, see?”  She peels the sleeve of her jacket up to show Mila her elbow, where a violet patch is already spreading.  It's cold enough in the rink that her skin's already numb, anyway.

“It’s my fault, though!  Should I get you some ice?”

“I think we have enough ice,” says Sara dryly.  “Just sit with me a few minutes until I’m back on my feet.”  She pulls her sleeve back down and rests her elbow against the comforting sting of the rink. 

Mila helps her back across the ice, grasping her elbow to lead her towards a bench in the kiss and cry.  “Oh!  No, wait, I have a better idea.  I’ll be back in five minutes, I promise!”  Mila totters off faster than any human ought to be walking on skates.

Sara pulls her phone out of her pocket and peels off a glove so she can unlock the screen.  No new calls.  Only one text message from Mickey-smileyface-purple heart emoji.

_Fine.  Do you what you want._

She turns her phone off and stuffs it back into her pocket.

“Here!  I brought you this!”  Mila reappears carrying, miraculously, two paper cups of hot chocolate curling steam into the chilly air.  Sara gulps hers and burns her tongue.  It’s got mint in it—her favorite.

Mila got vanilla caramel, and they swap cups to trade sips.  Some of Mila’s sticky lipgloss rubs off on Sara’s mouth along with a smear of whipped cream. 

As they trade back, Mila’s knuckles brushing against Sara’s bare hand, Mila’s phone, shaking violently, leaps out of her pocket and rattles on the metal bench.  “Oops,” Mila says with a shrug.  The screen of her phone is already cobwebbed with cracks.  She lifts it up.  “Oh, no!  I told Viktor I’d meet him downtown for drinks!  I think he wants to sulk about his _man troubles.”_ She wiggles her eyebrows.

Sara waves a hand.  “You should go.”

“Are you sure?  I can stay with you.  Take you back to the hotel.”

Sara places a hand over her knee.  “No, it’s fine.  I’ll just take a cab.  Mickey will pretend he isn’t mad anymore if he sees I’m _injured_.”

“Are you sure?”  Mila asks again, and they go through another few rounds before she finally agrees to call them both cabs. “Okay.  Taxis are on the way.  The roads must be busy.  Speaking of you-know-who… any news?”

Sara sighs.  “Yeah. I think he’s calming down a little.  He burns himself out fast, but he’ll be ready to go again tomorrow.”  She sips her chocolate, letting the heavy sweetness sit on her tongue.  “I guess this is good practice.  This is only a fraction of what it’s going to look like when I start dating.”

Mila’s eyebrows raise.  “Well you’d better make it worth the outrage.  Be as audacious as possible.”

“I don’t know if audacious is really my style,” says Sara dryly, bracing her chin on a hand.  “Although I could go for a bad boy in a leather jacket, probably.”

“Ah, is that your type, then?” Mila asks with a bounce of her shoulder.  The strap of her sports bra slips down one collarbone.  “That’s good. But you can’t stop there, you have a lot of time to make up.  What else?”

Sara taps a finger against her lips, avoiding Mila’s intent eyes.  She doesn’t really know if she has a type at all, of anything.  She’s spent twenty-three years of her life emphatically trying not to think about it.  Playing the princess in the tower to Mickey’s chivalrous knight so she wouldn’t have to.  The princess in the tower doesn’t want anything.

But Sara wants a lot of things.

“Um… maybe a girl with a motorcycle?” she says, trying to play it cool, betrayed by the up-tempo patter of her pulse in her fingertips. 

“A motorcycle?  So, a bad _girl_ in a leather jacket, then?”

“I’m just saying, I feel like my girlfriend should have a motorcycle.  So we can ride into the sunset with our hair flowing in the wind while Mickey screams across the Atlantic.”

Mila laughs, almost missing the ringing alert from her phone that their cabs have arrived.  She swings her legs over the bench, but twists back around at the waist so she’s looking at Sara, face-to-face, and squeezes her hand.

“Go forth, Sara Crispino, and date your bad boys with leather jackets and cool girls on fast motorcycles.”  She leans forward and cups Sara’s chin in her chilled fingers.  “And when I see you again at the Grand Prix series in a few months, you can tell me all about it.  Maybe over drinks.  Maybe I’ll even get a motorcycle.”  And she leans forward, her glossy red lashes tickling Sara’s cheek as she gives her a kiss right by the corner of her mouth.

Sara blinks into an empty rink that suddenly seems so much brighter, the fluorescents overhead blazing brilliant white, Mila’s helping grasp on her elbow almost burning through her shirt.

With a grin, a wave, and a brassy “Dasvidaniya!” Mila hands her down into her cab. 

Sara pulls her phone back out of her pocket to look at her reflection shining in its blank black surface.  There’s a sticky pink smear from Mila’s lip gloss on her lower left cheek.  She presses her fingertips beneath it, but doesn’t wipe it away. 

She’s going to have a lot to think about for the next few months.  But maybe, just maybe, it’s actually going to be fun.

**Author's Note:**

> What's better than this, just gals being pals? Thanks for stopping by to read!


End file.
